Today we traveled to Ultrecht, another gorgeous city in The Netherlands. It is impressive how many of these beautiful cities the country has and how easy it is to travel between them. The more time I spend here, the more I love the public transportation and wish the US had something comparable. One of my favorite things about Pittsburgh this past year was their bus system. After visiting The Netherlands, though, I realize how incredibly lacking Pittsburgh’s system is. The public transportation here involves trains, light rail, and busses that run frequent enough that missing a train or bus does not feel like a big deal as another will arrive soon after. In addition, this variety of modes of transportation seems to allow access to almost anywhere within the city as well as multiple bordering cities. Unlike in Pittsburgh, where I quickly realized there were some activities that were going to be impossible to do without having a car, here I can imagine living without a car. The public transportation seems to take people closer to their destination, as it runs more places, and takes people further from the city, to more remote places.

In Ultrecht, we visited Aurea, a company that builds artificial intelligence algorithms that use images captured via a drone to analyze a farmer’s crops and aid them in precise farming. The algorithms identify fruit, flower blooms, or other important aspects of the crop and then makes an assessment based on these measurements. These measurements are used to build detailed maps identifying exactly which trees need to be treated with pesticide sprays or other farming tactics. By treating each crop individually the farmer ensures that they get the best yield from every plant, maximizing output while minimizing use of chemicals. AI and other technologies have consistently been used to customize existing tools to better fit each individual part affected. This is a neat example of that and how it will help the environment and farmer by producing more fruit for the same energy expended.

Our presenter from this company, Ruan, also mentioned that the team was working on a system that used cameras to 3D model the trees and run the analyses this way. This would allow the farmer to purchase the equipment and do the analyses themselves just by driving around their field. There would no longer be the need for a drone pilot to come out to help analyze the field multiple times a week or even every day. I was curious about how they were planning to send this data to their servers which seemed to be an interesting issue they were facing. Ruan talked about how the issue is that the farms often have bad cellular connection so when sending data wirelessly, they have to process most of it on the farm device to minimize the amount of data being sent. Even so, they are concerned that the connection won’t be good enough for this to be possible, so they also have programmed the ability for the farmer to take a usb out of the device and manually upload the data after each run. This is clearly a less elegant solution that requires more action from the farmer. I found the discussion around all these considerations interesting as it is my first time seeing up close a new product being designed. It is incredible how much work has to be done and how many things have to be taken into account before releasing a new product to market. I really liked the cute campus the building was situated on and the feeling of a small but highly innovative tech company. I definitely would like to reach out to Ruan and talk about possible internships and just ask questions about this technology in general.

Finally, during our free time we explored Utrecht which was a very nice city. I feel like a broken record but, yet again, I am enamored by the architecture of the cities here. I also really liked the small streets in this city that had no cars on them. The buildings on these streets were older and the cobble and brick roads gave me a cozy feeling that was reminiscent of Italy. The feeling is something I have never felt in an American city but one I really enjoy about Europe. For dinner we went to a sushi restaurant back in Amsterdam and I found a sushi that felt very Dutch to me: tempura, avocado, and mayonnaise. I got it simply because I wanted to try the Dutch food but I ended up really enjoying it. The Dutch may not have many good food options, but the few things they do have I really like.

Finally, the word of the day is gebakken which means fried. This feels appropriate as it seems the Dutch enjoy their fried food.

Also, thanks very much to the Bursics for some delicious icecream!